#(but the fact the show was so poorly advertised you KNOW people will just be hearing about the show for the first time for ages to come)

[xoxoemynn]

ngl every time I see new fans falling in love with OFMD for the first time 🥹.

I know people were scared the fandom would disappear after cancellation, but people are still discovering the show all the time!

And honestly, kind of jealous.

To be able to watch Ed and Stede fall in love for the first time, to start dipping your toes into all the amazing fic, to see how talented our artists are, to see all those incredible gifsets that rip your heart out... they have a whole new beautiful world ahead of them!

And then the older fans get to soak up all that fresh, new excitement they have and it's just so good! New fans, new ideas, new head canons, new friends!

More love!

They really weren't lying.

A love like ours can't disappear in an instant. ❤️

[hero-dwelling]

They should have shown Izuku's dreams for a future agency, and they should have shown Izuku's students love him.

The "ew, Izuku is a teacher, that sucks" rhetoric from the grossest people online would not be so tiresome, aside from how it hurts hearing that if you work in education and perpetuates the dumbing down of the general population, if the manga did more to show Izuku was loved as a teacher.

And the fact he was now a teacher instead of running his own agency may be more accepted if we had seen earlier that, perhaps, Izuku really didn't have as much of a handle as he should have to structure an agency that was feasible and not just an overly idealistic dream.

Show Izuku's Students Love Him

Let's start with "show Izuku's students love him."

We get just the bare minimum, with Kota still appreciative of his big bro. And we see he is really good at educating, informing, and encouraging a potential future student like Dai.

But when Aizawa deflates all of Izuku's confidence, even snarky over-confidence, about being a good teacher, we really lack any evidence to know who is correct, Izuku for celebrating how well he is doing as a teacher, or Aizawa for pointing out how his students are getting arrogant and may walk all over him.

I know a future film, the anime adaptation, or a light novel story could answer these questions; however, as I will keep repeating, such important information should be in the main story proper, not in a tie-in work that the story is advertising at you to get your dollars to get the rest of the story.

The last chapter needed to show us how well and how poorly Izuku does in teaching, not leaving it to Aizawa to offer his biased opinion. (There are numerous excellent posts on Tumblr right now showing that Aizawa is not one to talk about poor teaching practices--and we kind of needed to see what Izuku does well and does poorly to understand why Aizawa, who did manage to help his students time and again, is correct in his assessment of Izuku.)

In other words, show us class activities Izuku does--and how much the students love them. Show the flaws, too: maybe it's cringey that Izuku does show up in his old Pro Hero costume, or his stories of the past come off as nostalgia because he peaked too soon. But keep going back to how the students appreciate him regardless--that is why he is here, that is why he should be here, he is really good at this work, and what he does will help these students in the future.

Show Us What Kind of an Agency Izuku Wanted to Create (and Why It Would Not Have Worked)

Showing Izuku is appreciated as a teacher would also make us understand why he still feels emptiness. It's not that the job is not fulfilling, it's not that it doesn't have manageable hours and decent enough pay, it's not that he is not appreciated by coworkers and students, it's not as if other Pro Heroes are not also teachers--but is not the same as being a Pro Hero, it was not his childhood dream, it is different than what he had hoped to accomplish.

Granted, it also would have helped if Izuku's dream had a bit more specificity and groundedness, something also lacking a bit in All Might's professed dream to Nana. In other words, I kind of wish we had scenes of the students planning what their future agencies would look like. Maybe that happened in one of the light novels and I missed it. The scene I imagine is Izuku having his plan laid out for what kind of an agency he would like to have, then all the other students jumping in, showing how much thought they all have put into it, the strengths and flaws to Izuku's plan compared to those of his classmates, whether it would be local work or national or international work, how big a staff, which kinds of emergencies he would specialize in.

And, speaking personally, you'd need someone to say what someone (wrongly and poorly) once said to me about the career plans I had made:

"You got to kill that dream, it's not realistic, it will never happen."

(That is still some of the worst advice I ever received and was offered in such an awful manner--goddamn, it's a dream, of course it is idealistic, just focus on what works in the dream, not throw all of it out.)

You need to prep the audience for the potential that, while Izuku has the superpower and the planning skills to get close to what he desires, he may never get all of it or even accomplish some of it perfectly. That way, the audience has that seed of doubt about whether Izuku will achieve that dream (which, in Chapter 430, he does not), or whether he will once again defy the odds, as he has before, hence setting up a mystery. It lets the story still deflate the audience that Izuku didn't get to what he hoped for, but it also kept the mystery around long enough.

Plus, it allows for worldbuilding (which kinds of agencies are out there), adds some much needed academia to this story (career planning), and establishes Izuku's strengths (he can plan for an agency) and weaknesses (he is so idealistic he may overlook practical limitations as to how well a staff could work together).

And as a bonus, maybe have a guest lecturer for that day of the agency planning exercise: Tenya's brother Tensei. Vigilantes showed Tensei is probably the best out there at coordinating a Pro Hero agency of people whose superpowers have little or nothing to do with his own and are instead there to make up for what he lacks or to build on what he and his team do well. If anything could take what worked in Vigilantes, do some lore-dump in the main series, and reference another story as an advertisement without sacrificing enough info to still keep the audience informed on just what they need to know, all of that is a win.

[momo-de-avis]

Sinto-me um bocadinho triste no que se trata de viajar. Após ganhar maior "awareness" quanto às consequências do turismo, fica difícil de pensar num destino decente que não seja prejudicado por isso. As grandes cidades estão todas a ter imensos problemas com a habitação e os preços de praticamente todos os bens. Destinos pequenos sofrem imenso também (basta pensar no Hawaii). E isto é sem falar das consequências culturais em ambos os casos, ainda para mais quando se trata de povos que sofreram e ainda sofrem com o colonialismo. E o "engraçado" é que mal dá para explorar o próprio país ironicamente por causa do turismo. Será que as únicas opções éticas são não sair do local onde se mora ou fazer voluntariados nas zonas onde se visita? Sei que a culpa de muito do turismo ser assim é pela forma como o capitalismo estruturou o mundo, mas não deixa de ser triste de qualquer forma.

Peço desculpa se é um desabafo meio ignorante e estranho...

Travel during low season

Im dead serious and saying this both as someone perfectly aware of the tourism problem and also someone who works in tourism bc i want to still have a job but i dont want cities packed in the summer. We are so glad to see people travelling in january, February, bc it makes high season less suffocating

Also, whats important is not where to travel but how to travel. Practice conscious tourism.

First step is to learn about the country you're visiting, i know this sounds basic as hell but you wouldn't believe. I've had people arrive in lisbon who had never heard of natas/custard tarts. I don't mean compile a list of ten things to do and see, I mean learn the dos and don'ts. There are going to be cultural barriers and misunderstandings and its better to just, when it happens, go "haha apologies i was no aware" than believing everyone is trying to defraud you. Like when they charge you 7€ for the cheese and olives and bread they served you without asking in Lisbon they're not scamming you, that's a cultural thing, you just didn't look at the menu. They're scamming you when they charge you 2€ for slicing a sandwich

When i say learn about the country i do mean cultural aspects of course. The nata thing is a bit of an anecdote but it shows how poorly the person planned their trip since natas are the number one thing advertised about lisbon

Also please don't take suggestions for places to eat out from tiktok. I am yet to see a list that's good and not bougie

For me the most important thing is to ditch the authentic tourism mindset. I fucking hate Authentic Tourists TM. You're a tourist. You're going to eat at an overpriced restaurant, you're going to visit a highly touristic spot, you're going to wait in line and yes, you're going to see americans oh my god just deal with americans (this is a side rant never mind it). The fact is there are authentic places that are touristy. When i went to San Sebastián i had one pintxo place on my list and that was txpetxa taberna. It happened that our food tour had a stop there and it looks touristic as fuck. The walls are covered with photos of celebrities who went there and everything. But goddamn if our basque tour guide didn't say "mira, son portogeses eses" ans from behind the counter we hear "EU SOU DE TRAS OS MONTES" and we had the best Pintxos in my life. Who gives a shit if it looks touristic. Its one of San Sebastiáns most iconic tabernas. There's a lot of places in lisbon that are very authentic but they look touristy bc they adapted to the tourism wave

Also you won't find the truly authentic places bc the locals don't want you there. It's their getaway. You bet there are restaurants me and my coworkers keep a secret among us bc we just want a spot to rest and have cheap lunch. It's just that the authentic craze is very condescending. I am forever reminded of the american who asked me where to listen to fade and I directed her to a fado tour (i was working as reseller of touristic services back then) and she very condescendingly said "listen I've done those fado tours and they're just for tourists, I want an authentic place not what you're selling me" my bitch do you think fado is still prostitutes and sailors singing in a dingy tavern while some taverner spits into a glass and wipes it like some fucking dnd starting scene??? No amount of "fado has changed drastically" could convince this bitch. I also have a lot of "i want to eat at a place that has portuguese ppl only working there" well good fucking luck there

Authentic Tourists TM usually think they know your city better than you do and I promise you nobody hates them more than locals.

I also don't want to sell my own bread but do a guided tour. AND NOT A FREE TOUR STAY AWAY FROM FREE TOURS (if you have the chance, a lot of cities actually don't have any other option, in which case tip the fucking guide. Tip them and tip them well). Its just that, think of it this way: you've just arrived in a new city you are trying to know and you want suggestions for like lunch and getting around. A guide is your best option cause they will not give you the names of the truly authentic places and they will help you navigate the city against the touristic mass. I speak for myself, I try to get people out of the 28 tram every day by explaining to them that it truly is public transport and its going to be overcrowded and the line is extremely long but there are alternatives. The guides will also direct you to the touristic places you should be visiting and will help you practice more conscious tourism.

When a guide tells you to go to this one local restaurant they're probably avoiding sending tourists to places where every day citizens go to have lunch while working but they're nonetheless telling you: hey this is a local business that we should support. Be open with your guide, we appreciate the sentiment of this ask and i speak for myself and my coworkers, we will help you navigate the issue as best as we can bc we understand where you're coming from

Stay away from Airbnbs. Book a hotel. Hotels are not the expensive alternative anymore, there's a lot of options that are pretty affordable but also you have room service and breakfast of you want. Plus hotels tend to be located in central areas and that is what you want. Its the funniest thing seeing tourists look very discouraged and despondent as they look up the massive set of stairs they have to climb with their huge luggage in Alfama. What did you expect bro

The massive problem with tourism right now, the way I see it, is that governments are seeing this a cash money opportunity and are refusing to regulate tourism. I am of the opinion that we have to start limiting tourism. The Pena Palace should limit visits. Jerónimos monastery should limit visits. Etc. These places should only sell a very limited number of tickets a day. I don't care if you have to book three months ahead this can't keep happening. The line for the monastery today did a full U that's how long it was.

And we have to limit the number of cruise ships allowed in the city. We have to stop letting 20 thousand people dock outside of alfama at a time and pretend this is normal. We have to limit things. I want tourism to thrive cause i want to have a job lol hell i love being a tourist. But what the hell man I don't mind waiting a few years to visit some place because of limitations that come to the benefit of the locals. And also I'll still have work BC it's not just tourists who use touristic services, and i think it would do well for tourism agencies to stop bending over backwards for tourists and come up with a plan for LOCALS. Aim their services at LOCALS which ideally is what should happen in low season

One last thing. You mentioned hawaii but i am speaking only from a european perspective. I'm completely out of the loop with hawaii however aware of its mass tourism problem but I'm not going to talk about something i don't know

Anyway. Go ahead and travel. Visit lesser known places or grab a car and travel across the country. Travel during low season it's the best time to travel in my opinion. Practice conscious tourism. Read up on your destination, book a hotel, book a tour, plan your trip, and enjoy. And get that fridge magnet. You're a tourist, not an Authentic Tourist TM.

[bre-meister]

This is super random but I am, to this day, very upset that Disney announced all these new and exciting things for Princess and the Frog - one of their titles that is SO amazing and underrated partly do to their absolute lack of current advertising and merchandising- almost three years ago and have delivered nothing. In fact, it is almost impossible to find any recent updates from Disney about it at all!

More of my rant can be found under the cut but tl;dr: I’m tired of Tiana and Princess and the Frog being pushed to the side by Disney over and over especially when she is such a special character to so many people ❤️

And circling back around to the whole merchandise thing real quick, I am not exaggerating when I say there is almost no Disney licensed Princess and the Frog merch. Very little compared to other titles. When I was in the parks (and this was a few years ago so It could have changed but I’m honestly doubtful) I genuinely couldn’t even find a pair of Tiana themed Mickey ears. You know who did have some? Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, Bell, Elsa. Patf loungefy bags? Like 3. And I had to scour the internet to find them. I know recently there’s been a lot more cooking themed merch for Tiana in Epcot but again, that been very recent and while a spatula with her face on it is cute and on brand that doesn’t mean I don’t want a pair of ears. EARS! They don’t event have to be fancy! I can’t even get a mini backpack that looks like her dress like so many of the other princesses have? There aren’t even that many personal business who are making merch I could buy not aimed at little kids.

Disney really just released that movie and left it to die. Opportunities to meet Tiana at the park are much harder to come by than your other classics (although I will admit that they used her and Naveen a good amount in the shows they do on the castle steps last time I was there… which actually makes this make LESS SENSE to me!). And I get it, they are “classics” but patf is a classic to so many! It’s so odd that Disney didn’t try to capitalize on that fact that more people would probably be able to relate to Tiana more as a person who works hard in a capitalist society and is dead set on reaching her dreams through hard work. That’s more relatable than magic hair or talking rats and a fairy godmother that fix all your problems for you! And just to be clear again this is no hate to the other princesses like I understand that each has qualities that could easily make them someone’s favorite. Tangled is my second favorite Disney Princess movie! It just hurts to constantly see yours push aside time and time again.

Disney has been doing a much better job in recent years in terms of diversity but I am so tired of seeing Princess and the Frog (and other franchises featuring leads of color this rant is just patf specific as Tiana is the only Disney Princess I have ever been able to see myself in) being treated so poorly compared to others. I am very tired of this and frankly I don’t think it’s talked about enough (or AT ALL really) in Disney related spaces. Princess and the Frog and Tiana in general has never gotten the recognition it deserved. It will forever be my favorite movie and quite frankly, it never got the hype or recognition it deserved.

I don’t expect many people to actually read this especially since it is so far from my normal content but if you have, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk!

[hugsqueeze]

Hi hi Jesse!! I hope all is well and that your day is going amazingly 🥰✨️ I was just wondering-- who is the blue bunny critter in your OC meme? Their design is so so cute and I'd love to know more about them if you have any spare facts to share!! 💕

EEEK HIIIII MEG!!!!!!! :DDDD <33333 💕💕💕💕💗💖💖 HELLO HELLO!!!! THANK U SO SO MUCH FOR ASKING, I always love talking about my OCs!!!!! :9 And I'm super happy that he caught your eye!!!! 💕💕‼️‼️‼️ I'd be more than happy to give you more info about him.....

THE BLUE BUNNY CRITTER is BLINKER!!!!! My wonderful Blinker...... He is actually just a regular guy in a BUNNY COSTUME funnily enough HAHA!!! His actual name is Pascal Howell! And Blinker is the name of the character he plays, which is strangely ironic in an intentionally cruel way 🙁 Because he can't see. Not just that he can't see out of his costume but he literally has no eyes. I FEEL BAD BECAUSE YOU SAID HE HAS A CUTE DESIGN BUT . His circumstances are 😭😭😭 contrastingly horrific ACK!!!

He's a performer at an extremely unethical circus/stunt show in which the performers are being purposely mistreated for """comedic""" purposes (though the audience doesn't know this). Blinker (as a character) is advertised as perpetually dizzy, clumsy, and endearingly confused. He is always bumping into things. But the real reason why Blinker is so poorly coordinated is because he HAS NO EYEBALLS. His EYEBALLS were forcibly removed and he isn't used to walking around without sight, so naturally he is very clumsy. ☹️☹️☹️☹️ Eventually, he gets used to navigating without sight, though! And this is how he wins... It just takes him a little while to figure out...

He is often very sullen/melancholy and panicky because of his maltreatment (which is a somewhat jarring contrast from the appearance of his perpetually grinning mask/costume).☹️ He tries to be unobtrusive, as to not attract attention to himself. But he's really quite a sweet guy with good intentions. He isn't an antagonist/slasher type character... I guess he's like a protagonist of horrible circumstances more than anything, if that makes sense!!!!!

AND I HOPE IT'S OKAY IF I MENTION ANOTHER CHARACTER FROM THIS SAME STORY: PRETTY KITTY!!!!! Who is a fellow performer with Blinker, though I haven't figured out their deal yet!!! The story is rather OLD and probably worth a little revision, but they're basically people in mascot costumes!!!!! ^_^ EEK SORRY FOR ALL THE WORDINESS AS USUAL!! I hope this answers your question!!!!!!! 💖💖💕💕💓💓💕💘💘💗💗💗💗 THANK YOU SO SO SUPER MUCH AGAIN FOR THIS ASK, I had a LOT of fun talking about them so thank you again for the opportunity!!!! <333333 AND I HOPE YOU'RE HAVING AN ABSOLUTELY AMAZING DAY MEGGG!!!! This ask genuinely made my day heehee T_T <333333 !!!!!!!!

[silkiemae]

The Gloom Between Stars by Piper CJ

Welp, I finished this dumpster fire of a book and just…Piper, why? This book is as poorly written and edited as the self-published version of TNAIM. I know this was technically an ARC, but Piper advertised it as a free ebook. She was handing out bound copies at book signings, so this is the finished work that she plans on publishing. The sheer amount of misspelt words, anachronisms, grammatical errors, etc., was ridiculous. This book reads like the editors just gave up on actually doing their job because they knew Piper wasn’t going to listen to a word they said. And where in the hell were the sensitivity readers? 

This book was an absolute MESS, just as overwritten, pretentious and melodramatic as usual. Not only that, but some of the wording is so ridiculous. ‘His equilibrium was bobbing?’ The same handholding was present in the last two installments. Piper clearly thinks very little of her readers, considering the fact that she has to spell things out for them and is unable to leave any room for interpretation. I feel like I’m being talked to like an idiot through all 600 pages of this. Cherry picking from other religions, yet still trying to make it seem like there’s only one religion(the All-Mother), yet there are mentions of Yggdrasil(Norse myth), Seraphim(Christianity), and Bodhi(Buddhism). To be completely honest, I think Piper CJ is one of those authors that if anyone were to tell me they loved her and their books, I would immediately not trust them. These books are racist, ableist, plagiarized, misogynistic, and have absolutely horrid depictions of sex work. She doesn’t think suicide is enough to give a trigger warning but consensual breathplay that was not actually consensual is. And then she goes ahead to make jokes about the “consensual breathplay” like what she wrote wasn’t incredibly harmful. There’s also the fact that those who claim to love Piper and her books are incredibly cult-like with the way they blow smoke up her ass and reject any critiques against her. If you cannot handle criticism, you should not be an author. Sorry, Piper, but it’s true.

I truly wish that Bloom had some integrity and would not allow this fast publishing thing Piper is trying to do. All she is doing is barfing out a first draft and calling it done. She is not doing any of the work that is needed when writing a book, and this crap is what we’re left with. These books are not good at all, but if Piper had actually spent time on them, if she had listened to <I>any</i> feedback, then these books could’ve been good. There is potential in her prose, and she does a good job with sensory detailing, but she goes over the top every time and then, of course, there’s the problematic content that she refuses to acknowledge. This book spends far too much time explaining to us the thought process of everyone’s plans and telling us their feelings rather than showing them to us. It makes for an incredibly dull read. Just an example of how the majority of sentences are phrased in this book. “She thrust out a leg to sweep the stance of the corpse before picking up and continuing her run.” Do you really want to try and tell me that an editor read that sentence and said it was fine the way it was? Really? Anyway, on to the review. 

So, we start where TSAIS left off; yet again, there is little to no recapping. Nox & Co. are chasing after Amaris, who has been kidnapped by Nox’s father, King Ceres. Ceres believes that Amaris was born to be his tool to start a war with Queen Moirai since she’s the one who cast the illusion spell over his people and is the reason he lost his wife and child. The writing with this is incredibly convoluted because, in book one, we’re told that Ceres believed he had a son, then in book two, we’re told that Daphne(Nox’s mother and Ceres’ lover) had switched out her daughter for a son with her <I>husband’s</I> complexion. The husband is <I>not</I> King Ceres, so why did the Raascot fae ever suspect that Daphne’s alleged ‘son’ was Ceres’? She spread the rumor that the boy was her nameless husband’s in an attempt to hide the truth from him, but he found out anyway and killed the boy and beat Daphne to death.  So, somehow, this nameless husband has vanished after murdering both the princess and her son, and yet nobody seems to be aware of this? We never learn what happened to this guy, and Queen Moirai has literally been acting as if there is a Crown Prince, but it’s an illusion. So who is the Crown Prince that she’s conjuring? Is it the nameless husband? Is it the child who’s really dead? This is why Piper needed a developmental editor because none of this makes sense. 

As Nox and her companions follow after Ceres and Amaris, Nox is fuming, hating everyone, and blaming them all for what happened to Amaris. To help, Malik leads her into the woods and goes down on her.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  This is the first chapter. As this is happening, Nox thinks longingly of the days she was a sex slave and used to suck men's souls out through their dicks. Nox admits to preferring women, but Malik is the exception—and again, as I stated in my last review, this was so poorly done. Nox has been depicted as someone who is repulsed by the touch of men and has been desperate to escape them so that she can be with Amaris, yet Malik does the bare minimum, and she is all for him. It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t do anything to earn her trust; he just was there. There are no meaningful conversations between them to give us the inclination that they might have feelings for each other. It’s just horniness and sensory details. After this, they try and figure out the fastest way to reach the army—why this didn’t happen in the first chapter instead of Nox getting head, I don’t know. But anyway, Yazlyn and Nox bicker, preparing us for their inevitable enemies-to-lovers arc. Honestly, a lot of this reads like Piper didn’t know wtf to write, so she jumped ahead and never came back to fix any of it. Honestly, that’s what the whole book reads like. 

Eventually, they catch up to the army, and they’re attacked by mud demons, but nobody ever does <I>anything</I> useful to defeat them. Gadriel fucks off to go try, and reason with Ceres, who refuses to listen to reason—which, I get, but the way it’s written is just <I>so</I> absurd.  They’re fist-fighting and sword-fighting while Ceres’ people are being massacred around them. The others realize that the demons are blind and have super hearing and start <I>shouting</I> to one another that they should be quiet(LMFAO, idiots) and are like, “Sound is our enemy!”. Can anyone think of who might be incredibly useful in this type of fight? I can. Fucking Amaris. Who has a sonic boom power. Gadriel never once considers finding her and having her use her abilities to help defeat these monsters. Not a single person ever considers using sound to their advantage, and these are supposed to be people who are trained in tactics and monster hunting. Yet none of them can come up with a plan to fight the demons. Like, wtf? I think Piper wrote herself into a corner with the whole ‘demons can’t be killed’ thing because we get scenes like this, with people fapping around, looking like absolute morons. There are five pages of Nox freaking out as she tries to cross a river because she’s a demon who can’t cross running water. 

At some point, Malik finds a fae who can apparently control the demons. Again, the magic in this series has absolutely no rhyme or reason. The fae have no designated powers; the only thing we know is that the Raascot fae have powers associated with nightlife. And so far, that has been shadow magic, sucking souls out through sex, night vision, can get your neck broken and not die, can warm your body, can fly, etc. (what do any of those have to do with the other?) Why is Yazlyn so much weaker than her fae comrades? She does the same sort of exercise, does she not? Obviously, she has a different build than them, but there’s no reason why Yazlyn can’t be buff af too. Anyway, Malik stops the fae who was controlling the demons, Amaris got burned and is in a ditch somewhere, Nox finds Gadriel with her dad and is like, oh hello, father, and then he finally realizes that Gadriel was right all along, and instead of, idk, trying to make amends, or maybe help his kingdom he just is like ‘omg I fucked everything up here, take my kingdom!’ And kills himself. This was the clumsiest handling of suicide I have ever read. Not only does Piper give us a tw for ‘consensual breathplay’ (again, it was not actually consensual), but she <I>doesn’t</I> give a tw for suicide. Now, while I don’t believe that every book requires tw, I do understand why they’re there and considering Piper set a standard for including them in book 2, they should be included throughout the entire series. But again, doing the actual work is too hard for Piper, apparently. 

So, Nox’s father kills himself for shock value and as a lazy way to thrust her onto the throne. They call his death a sacrifice, making it into something noble and historic when it’s not that at all. The way suicide is handled in this is just beyond insensitive, and once again, WHERE ARE THE SENSITIVITY READERS, PIPER? 

After this little battle, we return to the Raascot castle. For the next three hundred pages, <I>nothing happens.</I> They hang out in the castle, they train, they talk, and they have poorly written sex. Nothing of substance happens whatsoever. I’ll tell you what does happen. Nox and Amaris reunite for the third time, and instead of being separated by physical circumstances, they have a really stupid fight. Nox, obviously, is traumatized after witnessing her father’s suicide, but Amaris, once again, is thinking all about her horniness and starts trying to make a move on Nox. Nox is like, uh no, wtf stop and Amaris, as usual, can’t handle rejection. They haven’t had a single conversation about what happened during their separation, they have only ever made out during their reunions, and now that they actually have the time and safety to have this discussion, Amaris is more interested in losing her virginity. Nox drops the bomb on Amaris that she is really the manifestation of prayer, and Amaris’ reaction is, WOW, HOW CRUEL ARE YOU TO SAY SUCH THINGS, NOX? Now knowing that Amaris was created solely for Nox, Nox is questioning if their feelings are real. And here is how Amaris chooses to respond. 

<i>”You feel confused? You, who has been such a constant in my entire life, even when I’ve had crushes on boys or liked men and spent years questioning what this relationship meant to me, only to finally accept that you are my exception. I love you, Nox. You’re the only woman I’ll ever want. Meanwhile, if the kingdom’s rumors are to be believed, you’ve been off fucking anyone and everything………..You’ve spent your whole life knowing the goddess made your heart for women, haven’t you? That wasn’t me, Nox. Do you know how confusing it’s been for me? I grew up liking boys! I like men. I do. I like fighting with them, I like training with them, I like wrestling and flirting and spending time with them. I’ve tried and failed on more than one occasion to create something with a man. And here you’ve been, destroying my feelings and twisting my head for years. You’ve had years to experience the world, you’ve let goddess knows who into your bed—but you were it for me. I thought that made this special, Nox. Finally, after all this time, I want the same thing you’ve always wanted. But the instant it was my choice in return, you turn me away. Do you know how fucked up that is?… We’ve had our whole lives to adjust! We’ve had two decades of time! Meanwhile, I still can’t get rid of my goddess damned maidenhood while you—”</I>

SO basically, Amaris is a fucking hypocrite. She called Nox a whore, and Amaris wants to lose her maidenhead REAL BAD. “You’ve had years to experience the world” She was locked up in a brothel as a sex slave, Amaris, while you fucked off with the reevers and learned to fight. Are you really that mad that your brothers-in-arms didn’t want to fuck you? Also, confirmation that Nox is a lesbian with an exception for only one man. And Amaris is straight, with an exception for only one woman. That’s not bisexuality, Piper. “You were it for me” You…. literally tried to fuck Gadriel. And Ash. You lying sack of shit. The way Amaris is mad for being rejected and not at all concerned about Nox, who just watched her father die in front of her, learned she was heir to both kingdoms and is now a queen to a kingdom she has no business or knowledge of how to run. Nox deserves far better than Amaris, and I hope this series ends with her(Amaris') death. Because that’s the only way I’ll be satisfied. 

After this fight, they decide they can’t be together until Amaris breaks the curse, and they can find out if their love is real. In the meantime, Nox assaults Yazlyn by shoving her forearm against her throat and <I>then</I> asks if she wants to fuck. The sex scenes are described uncomfortably, where the line of consent is incredibly fuzzy. But this is not the first time Piper has had issues with consent in her books, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Also, the written sex is <I>gross</I> It’s written as if the author has never actually been intimate with a woman because I can promise you it is not a bunch of  “puddles and wetness and soaked sheets”. You’re not just squirting the whole time. I don’t think Piper has any concept of how to actually write spice because all these are a bunch of flowery metaphors. And then, of course, Amaris and Gadriel are still doing their choking/finger bang sessions because her power is tied to her sense of arousal. WTF? There’s also that last scene with Malik and Nox that will haunt me til the end of my days. ‘The complementary cream that frosted his muscles.” Are you fucking KIDDING?

The fae that Malik caught turns out to be an extremist who thinks the world needs to be purified of all fae creatures with human blood. She doesn’t mind humans as long as they don’t dally with the fae. She calls Ash a mongrel and calls Nox ‘it’. Kinda like how the author calls Nox ‘it’ in her first book title. “The Night and <I>its</I> Moon.” Now, this nazi fae is from Sulgrave, which has been depicted as East Asia…(wow, Piper) (also, how is Gadriel South Asian if his parents are from Sulgrave?) They literally end up treating this racist like a little pet. They give her a special room, give her books when she’s good, call her lovely and adorable and then give her some ‘exposure therapy’ by forcing her to hang out with Ash, who is both half-fae and white. And then….they fall in love. And it makes no sense at all as to why. All we know about Tanith is that she’s a racist zealot, and then she’s depicted as this little flower who needs to be rescued by Ash all the time. There’s a scene where Ash’s dad, Elil, goes apeshit and tries to kidnap the nazi because she’s an ‘enemy of the continent’, and Ash literally calls the statement deranged. Bro…he’s right.  Honestly, the fact that I’m siding with the person meant to be depicted as raving is wild to me. Because he is right that Tanith is a danger to them all, and they’re being absolute morons by treating her the way they do. If it were to come back and bite them in the ass, Elil would be completely justified in being like, ‘told ya so’. Like, Ash legit tells his dad the nazi’s life is worth more than his dad’s. By the end of this, they behave as if Tanith has overcome her racism by being with Ash, but there is no evidence of that anywhere in the text. Nox even expresses that she hopes that Ash can ‘turn her’ with his lovemaking skills. Like, oh, you can just stop being racist if you fuck the person you’re prejudiced against! Do you think she’s changed because she asked Ash to stay with her after he rescued her from his dad? That could literally be tactical. She simply learns to tolerate them and hide her prejudice. Both Nox & Ash even say that they doesn’t think Tanith has shown any distance for her radical beliefs, but it’s okay because now she’s their friend—she’s not evil, Ash loves her, he would die for her, but she’s still a zealot.… Nox takes Tanith shopping to buy her a fancy new cloak, and they let her play ‘paintball arrows’ with the rest of their group; Ash falls in love with her in .2 seconds after she says ‘I’m sorry’ for nothing in particular and then crawls into bed with him. He buys her basically a promise ring of her favorite gemstone. Wtf? There were like four POV chapters from Ash with Tanith, and nowhere was there any room for romantic development or even character development from Tanith. Nowhere was there any de-radicalization of her racism. It reads more like the author is telling us we should be sympathetic to racists because they don’t know any better, and we should just be kind to them and befriend them, and eventually, they will learn to tolerate the people they are prejudiced against. But, uh, no. That’s not at all what anyone should be doing. We are <I>told</I> that Ash hated Tanith and then grew to like, then love her but it is never shown on the page at all. Just suddenly, they’re in love and Tanith is still racist. 

Three hundred pages of dithering around until some action finally happens. Amaris, Malik, Yazlyn and Gadriel are sent out to kill Queen Moirai. Three hundred pages of reading about Amaris and Nox screwing other people and not having a single conversation discussing what the other has been through, but they make up anyway right before Amaris leaves to kill the Queen. I’m not entirely sure how anyone is meant to see an actual romantic relationship between these women when there is absolutely none present. The first book was a lot of longing on Nox’s part but none on Amaris’. The second book was more of the same, but Nox found a new beau who would eat her out, so she stopped thinking so much about Amaris. Now in book three, they barely think about one another. This is not the star-crossed bisexual romance I was promised. Anyway, they’re sent to Farleigh to ensure that the convenient manufactured items they were given will block the curse, only to find out that Agnes, the Gray Matron is a racist. She calls Gadriel and Yazlyn demons and seems more disgusted by their wings than anything. This is funny, imo because not only was Nox described as having bronze skin(but then later told she looks like her mother, who was white), so why wasn’t she treated with the same disrespect? She is clearly not a white person from Farehold, I’m pretty sure that Agnes was there when Nox was named, so she’s well aware that her name was Nox so she wouldn’t forget the night. So why the fuck is she suddenly racist towards the Raascot fae? Why did she suddenly seem to forget why Nox was named Nox and who Nox actually was? Because there’s no way she didn’t know. It doesn’t make any logical sense that she wouldn’t. Also, Amaris can call Gadriel ‘demon' and get away with it, but when Agnes does it, it’s racist…. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Come on, Piper. 

Amaris has mastered her persuasion ability off-page, apparently, because now she’s persuading everyone without issue. To get into the castle, they decide to have Malik drive, and Amaris sits in the back with Gadriel and Yazlyn and then rips off Star Wars by pulling a ‘these are not the droids you’re looking for’ moment. On the carriage ride, Gadriel tells Amaris she’s the most amazing person to exist. ‘You are the most beautiful creature on this earth. You are the most talented assassin I’ve ever met. You are brave, you’re intelligent, you are quick on your feet, and you are incredibly capable.” I can provide text evidence to refute every one of those points. Amaris is an idiot and a coward. She literally goes into the castle with no plan at all. And spends the entire chapter explaining what everyone else is going to do. Like, ma’am, please stop.

Gadriel also says no other man is allowed to touch her, but apparently, it’s fine if Nox does it. Honestly, I fucking hate men like that.

The last sixty pages were the most exciting part of this book. Moiroi has invited all the nobles to her castle to lure Raascot’s sneaky task force to Aubade so that she can send all her forces to Gwydir. While Amaris & co. are trying to infiltrate Aubade, Nox & co. are being attacked by Farehold soldiers led by The Hand & The Hammer. The Hand is none other than Millicent, the brothel owner with the slithery reptile death hand, so she’s named after her disability…nice. The Hammer is some random buff dude with a spiked mace. Nox faces off against Millicent who tells her she killed Emily with no prompt whatsoever—honestly, I forgot about Emily because so did Nox. Nox throws Chandra and even though she’s sucked at it this whole time, she manages to hit her target and cut off Millicent’s death hand and then that’s done. Ash lets Tanith out of her binds(because even though she’s still a racist zealot, she’s not evil apparently, and Ash would die for her), and she incinerates a bunch of soldiers and Ash’s dad(even though Ash’s eyes were closed during this scene he somehow sees everything that happened, huh.) 

Meanwhile, Amaris has been spending time trying not to repeat her past mistakes by whispering to every guard in Aubade to stand down if any fighting happens, but this ends up backfiring beautifully when an army of ghouls shows up to kill everyone. I thought this part of the book was very clever, but once again, it’s overwritten, and the reader’s hand is held throughout the entire thing. While Amaris chases after Moiroi, she’s unable to harm her because she has a ward protecting her. Instead of having Amaris figure out herself that the ward is her crown, Yazlyn literally shouts the answer to her while Moiroi stands there listening and gaping like, ’oh no! They’ve discovered my plan!’ Amaris then stands there for another few minutes debating on how to remove the crown from her head when she could literally throw a dagger and knock it off. But apparently, the All-Mother gave her the gift of shock wave specifically to knock the crown off her head. What? There are several more pages of Amaris agonizing over how to knock off the crown/summon her shock wave without being horny, and then Moiroi calls Amaris a witch, but isn’t she also a witch?

Oh my god, so we finally get the answer about the illusion of the Crown Prince. Moiroi has been creating an illusion of the boy she thought was her grandson this whole time to keep the people together. Idk that seems a bit ridiculous, imo. Did she not care about her daughter disappearing/dying? What happened to the husband who killed them both because Moiroi allegedly knows about him? That’s what I want to know. We also learn that Daphne was pregnant before Moiroi cursed Raascot, so how long after the curse was she married off? How far along in the pregnancy was she when Moiroi cast the curse? And how was it that Moiroi wasn’t present when Daphne gave birth? When royalty gives birth, it’s typically a whole affair with midwives and the lot, so how did no one but Agnes and the Temple Priestess know that she had a daughter? And also, considering Moiroi believed the grandson to be the nameless husband’s son, it also refutes the whole plot point in book one, where the Raascot fae were searching for King Ceres’ son.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  This is why you needed a developmental editor, Piper. Also, can I say that the dialogue in these books is absolutely atrocious? Nobody talks like this. At all. 

Why is everyone in this book gagging? Is it because they’re as disgusted by Piper’s writing as I am? This book should be the last one with Amaris lingering on the precipice of death, and then she should stay dead. The End. 

[nientedal]

1-22 for Megamind (just kidding, unless,) but particularly: 1, 3, 10, 15, 16

Oooooo! Lol, going straight for the throat on these >:3

Their physical weak spots The most obvious one is his neck. Look, Megamind is strong and his head is well-balanced, but his neck is quite long and that has some drawbacks. Less obvious weak spot would be his secondary respiratory system-- his gills vent between the bones of his ribcage, so if you got up in there, you could potentially do some serious damage. And you can induce a state of tonic immobility by petting back to front over his crown, which is NOT something he advertises (currently that's just in the Feathers&Fins verse, but I'm considering expanding it to my general headcanons). There is also a poorly-healed hole in the back of his skull behind his left ear, but it's VERY small, so it tends to be overlooked.

Scars or painful spots Megamind doesn't typically scar, but he does have a couple of scars on his chest from Metro Man's lasers. He will also start having some joint and spinal problems as he gets older.

Fears/phobias He doesn't 'do' doctors or medical personnel outside of the prison infirmary-- and after the doctor who treated him as a child retires, he also doesn't stay there for long. He and Minion have everything they need to treat him at Evil Lair, from basic first aid to major surgery. Having a mindtwin with mechanically-stabilized hands is useful for more than just fine electrical work! Hospitals are even worse. Too much white, and the smell is bad. Less viscerally, he fears losing the very few people who are important to him. Minion, Roxanne. Even Metro Man, in a way, although I think he only develops that fear (or realizes it's a thing) after the events of the movie. Also? Earplugs. Fuck if he knows why, but he HATES stuff in his ears. The whole business is just wrong. Show him some earplugs and he'll get the heebie jeebies.

What it takes to make them cry Megamind has walls, but there's like six inches of space between the bottoms of the walls and the ground. If you tunnel under them by doing certain things he (A) doesn't expect and (B) wants so badly he won't let himself think about them, you can get emotional reactions out of him fairly easily (just be prepared to deal with the aftermath of those reactions: displays of genuine emotion are going to freak him out after the fact). That said, actually getting him to cry would require a situation where he is already somewhat comfortable lowering the proverbial drawbridge or throwing you some climbing gear, OR he's coming down from a depersonalization episode, OR he's just really really freaking out. Otherwise, the most you're getting is probably just a couple tears without actual crying-crying. ...So, give him a panic attack, basically.

Dark secrets/’skeletons in the closet’ We're getting into this a bit in Undertow, but I headcanon that Megamind is not actually all that broken up about having to commit the occasional murder. The part that REALLY freaks him out is that he isn't freaked out. But like...he's a supervillain, yes? That's "villain" with a "super" in front of it? I'm sorry, but you do not get that title by building robo-sheep and typhoon cheese. The key is presentation, but there's a bunch of different places that could go. And in combination with the headcanon that he's also Overlord of Metro? Sometimes his hand is forced. He does typically give people a choice: death, or the Long Gallery. The latter is basically a reinforced bunker with sealed boxes of blue cubes in it, suspended over tanks of water. The boxes will disintegrate naturally in about two to three hundred years.

It takes him a lot to hit the point where he's ready to do either of those things, but sometimes shit happens. On a related note, he...also doesn't threaten to do anything he isn't ready to follow through on. This probably doesn't look like a "dark secret" until you remember some of the threats I've had him make :/ He protects his territory.

The rest of his "skeletons" are backstory-related and would probably require several content warnings, so! Not going into that too much here. Although I did very vaguely allude to one of the backstory things in the last paragraph of my response to this other ask (which nobody appears to have picked up on, lol).

[hoghtastic]

Hey there! I remember that some had been discussing why most of the younger cast of vikings didn't really progress with their careers. I have just recently rewatched the whole show, and now with some time passed and not as much of a hype I personally felt like often the acting of them was honestly hideous. I noticed that especially with Marco, Ida, Georgia and yes also with Alex. Some of them clearly had some very good and memorable scenes but compared to what Travis did with his character I now understand that a lot of people abandoned or didn't like the show after Ragnars death. Yes, Ivar carried the show like a lot after that but I personally thing that the fact that Ivar just looked hot had a lot of saying with that. Because when I rewatched the show, I thought that with season 5 the story was more often written poorly then not! I know that they were young and didnt have that much experience, but honestly if that is their biggest advertisement for themselves I kinda understand it's hard for them to get new big jobs.

Just my 2 cents, sorry if most disagree, hope no one feels offended. Just thought to myself its almost a bit surprising how my own view changed with a bit of distance form the fandom and hypetrain.

Thank you so much for sharing your opinion, anon! 😊 It's a really interesting perspective, and it's totally understandable that with some time and distance our views on things will change.

If I may also add my two cents, from my experience talking to friends and acquaintances who also used to watch Vikings, people abandoning the show after Ragnar's death had nothing to do with the new actors' skills. They were just really attached to Ragnar as a character and felt really disappointed that they decided to kill the main character, so much that they didn't see a point in continuing to follow the story, as the sons' story wouldn't be the same without Ragnar. So some people gave up right away, not even giving the show and the new cast a chance. It also didn't help that, at the time, only seasons 1 to 5 were available on Netflix, and most people didn't feel like subscribing to another platform (Amazon Prime, if I'm not mistaken) to see the 6th and final season. And while I agree that sometimes the writing wasn't the best, we can't really blame the actors' skills for that either, as they try to do their best with what they're given, I believe. 😅

I also absolutely agree when you said that "they were young and didn't have that much experience", but being on Vikings was already a huge achievement and they could have worked on improving their skills after that. I can only comment about Alex, whose career I've been following the closest in comparison to the others you mentioned, but I'd say that the problem wasn't his performance in Vikings. He showed a huge potential and commitment to the character, even if he wasn't perfect. The problem was what he did after. It seemed to me (based on past interviews) that he got a little picky with which roles he'd accept, considering some smaller ones as some kind of "downgrade" after Vikings. He also didn't seem to have resumed his formal studies or any other kind of education that would help him improve as an actor. And in such a competitive field of work, where good big roles are somewhat scarce, I don't think those were very clever choices. But this is just my personal opinion, of course, and maybe he preferred to prioritize his mental health back then and is happy doing some lighter work nowadays. 😊

[teacup-captor]

You're inviting us to info dump in your ask box..?

Okay so

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's super popular in media, even among people who have never consumed any TMNT content. But what is its history?

It started as a much darker indie comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, who created it as a parody of popular superhero/vigilante comics of the time (Daredevil was a big inspiration for them). It was first just one drawing of a bipedal turtle wearing ninja equipment and wielding a pair of nunchaku, with the writing "ninja turtle" to the side. From there, they started self-publishing the original comics under the name "Mirage", as their studio name. The first volume came out in 1984 and it had a pretty long run.

In the Mirage comics, all the turtles were essentially the same character. Their names were indeed Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Raphael, but they all wore red bandanas and even switched weapons occasionally. They had basically no differences in personality. Here's a fun fact about Splinter: his name is a parody of Daredevil's master/mentor character, whose name is the Stick. So Splinter is just coming off of the Stick. And a fun fact about April O'Neil is that she wasn't actually white originally, she was mixed race. If I remember correctly, I believe one of the creators said that she was meant to be Black and Asian. She was modelled after a girlfriend one of them had at the time, who was mixed race.

In 1987, a studio approached Eastman and Laird and asked to turn their comic into toys. But to do it, they decided to make an animated show to act as television advertising. So the 1987 animated series was born. It was a hit, and that's probably the version you might see around most often. It ran for over a decade I believe. With the '87 show also came some companion comics, they're called the "Archie comics". I'm not actually sure why, they might've been made in collaboration with Archie.

In 1990, 1991 and 1992 came three live-action ninja turtles films and a TV series based on them. The puppetry and animatronics for the first two movies were done by the Jim Henson Company. The first film was really successful and critically acclaimed, it still holds up well today. The second and third movies (Secrets of the Ooze and Turtles in Time I think?) Did not do as well and were heavily criticized by critics and fans alike. The TV series made as a sequel to the movie also did poorly. It was titled The Next Mutation and saw a fifth ninja turtle, one named Venus de Milo. She wore teal and had her mask tails braided. In the show, she was from China and raised there, but only met the turtles at the start of the show. As with any show of its time, obviously the male characters had to flirt with and hit on the female lead, which led to some rather uncomfortable ideas, as all the ninja turtles are siblings.

Not much news came from TMNT for a while after that, until in 2003, when another animated show came out. It was a lot more dark than the '87 show, a lot closer to the original comics. However, it went much more in-depth with the characters. The 2003 version is widely considered to be the best TMNT show, but not everyone has that opinion. (I don't, for example.)

In 2007, another movie, an animated one, came out, simply titled TMNT. To be honest, I don't know much about this movie, but it's funny and people liked it. They were planning to release a sequel, but something happened and it was scrapped.

In 2011, IDW publishing came out with their own iteration of TMNT, which is called the IDW continuity. In this version, which is still ongoing, Raphael was separated from his brothers at first, but they met up at the start of the comics. Another thing is that it further exploded the turtles' and splinter's pasts, being reincarnated from people who lived in feudal Japan and were killed by the Shredder. This version also has (entirely in my opinion) some of the best versions of Casey and April. This comic saw another female ninja turtle, a yellow-wearing one called Jennika. Jennika is basically like Venus but infinitely times better.

In 2012, nickelodeon came out with a brand new cartoon, a 3D animated series that leaned more into the "teenage" aspect of the TMNT a bit more at the start. Tonally, it was lighter again, comparable to the first cartoon. That lighter tone didn't last for long, before long it had become dark again. At the start of its run, older ninja turtles fans were critical of it for it's tone. They eatethed their words pretty quickly though, the 2012 series is now beloved by so many old and newer fans. It ran until 2017, for five seasons.

In 2014 and 2016, there were two live-action movies directed by Michael Bay. Those movies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, had very mixed reception. It was heavily criticized for its portrayal of the turtles. However, some people really enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, those movies. I'm not the biggest fan of them personally, but to each their own.

Then in 2018, just a year after the 2012 series ended, a new series came out, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Rise of the TMNT is a 2D animated version of the turtles. It saw them as various ages and various species of turtles. Executive produced by Andy Suriano and Ant Ward, it was a very new take on the turtles, and a lot of older fans didn't like that it's different. Due to poor advertising as well as backlash from older fans, it was put on indefinite hiatus in 2020, cutting season two in half and making an attempt to remove the opportunity for more seasons. However, in 2022, nickelodeon and Netflix came out with the Rise of the TMNT movie, which got a lot of new fans into it. Personally, rise is my favorite series. A ton of fans of rise are trying to get nickelodeon to continue with it, unpausing it. Prospects are actually looking pretty good for more rise right now. But remember we have to continue supporting the writers and actors in the WGA strike.

So cut to 2023. On August 2nd this year, we're getting a whole new TMNT movie, which is gonna be followed by a new series based on it. Mutant Mayhem, directed by Seth Rogen (I think he's directing?) will lean more into the teenage aspect of it than any previous version, and it looks super cool. I'm crazy excited for it to come out.

So there's a brief recap of the history of TMNT. I may have missed some parts, I apologize if I did. TMNT is one of my special interests, I could rant about it for so long. I just don't wanna keep typing :)

Thank you for the invitation to info dump, this is my favorite thing to write about fr

Omg aaaa yesss!!!!!! This is so cool anon ty for teaching me omg :O I had no idea there were so many different TMNT series lol

I'm so glad you got the opportunity to infodump as well :D I can tell you're passionate about this ^w^

Hope you have a lovely day anon!!!! (and if you or anyone else wants to tell me more, can someone tell me the differences between the turtles? And which one is which color? xD)

[theveryworstthing]

hey spooky gamers

a lot of people messaged me to check out Cozy Grove and after playing it for a few days i gotta say that the vibes are There but there are too many things that leave me annoyed each play session to make this the chill game i was told it is.

i know a lot of people love the time gated aspect of it but it just makes me feel like the game has a baby leash on me and jerks back on it harshly whenever i try to make more progress than it wants. this pairs poorly with the fact that a ton of fetch quests give you no story progression so you can end a day of play with only a few finished Where’s Waldo puzzles under your belt and every single ghost mystery untouched. in fact, i honestly think that if this were advertised as a find the object game with a story then i’d like it more because i wouldn’t be expecting something else. i’m a fan of spooky vibes and story driven games, not so much a fan of endless repetitive fetch quests that sometimes take days. getting randomly stuck on pieces of scenery, searching for single off-white leaves on the cluttered off-white ground, and storage problems that involve running back and forth across the island constantly unless you want to sell/burn everything only to be asked for that exact thing a second later and having to wait days for it to show up again don’t help.

the story is interesting but also, and i know this is probably an unpopular opinion, i don’t really like most of the bears? like, i find them interesting and i want to see their backstories but as i told my friend, all these grown ass adults seem pretty okay with the fact that a lost and isolated child is trapped on their death island doing their bidding until they figure their shit out. i get that in this world Spirit Scouts are a thing and also that everyone is trapped here because they’re deeply flawed people too in their own heads or weighed down by their own problems to move on, but also that’s a dark part of this story that i wish they explored more. like, just a glimmer of the bears realizing, “oh shit, we have to work this through not just for ourselves but also for this kid who can’t get home until the island lets them go or whatever” would do a world of wonders for me. it would make it feel like they actually cared for the scout (which would make me more willing to do fetch quests), it would make them think about the passage of time and life after being stuck in limbo for so long (imagine suddenly remembering that children grow and people learn? how much would that fuck someone up who has effectively been standing still mentally and spiritually for years and years?) and it would also probably put some interesting spins on their progression. idk, i just think that the characters having more drive and connection would make the story tighter.

or maybe, “it’s your responsibility to fix everyone’s problems with no support of your own,” is just a specific thing i’m picking up from this game because of my own ghostly backstory. who can say.

i know this all seems pretty harsh but i do think it’s a beautiful game with a lot of interesting potential and i’m always down to support indie titles. i’m only a little over a week in so if you’ve played this, let me know what you think!

[phantoms-lair]

Hero's Spirit Snippet

A red bolt of plasma interrupted the fight and pinned the Hero Killer to the wall. "Izuku Midoriya what the hell do you think you're doing?!"

"Sorry Valerie," Izuku said weakly, the white ring signifying his return to normal forming along his middle.

"Don't you dare! Your living form actually has organs where those holes are and...you used the Wail didn't you?"

"Sorry," Izuku said weakly.

"You two," Valerie ordered Iida and Todoroki, "Get him out of here. Make sure he doesn't use his powers or changes back until those stab wounds have mostly filled in."

"What about Stain?" Iida asked, even as he moved to support his friend.

"He won't be able to hurt me or escape my tech. I'll keep an eye on him till reinforcements come."

"So you'll take all the credit?" Todoroki said dryly.

Valerie's eyes flared red. "I'm getting myself listed as a vigilante so Midoriya doesn't have to face the consequences of this. You realize if word gets out you fought a villain your protection is gone right?"

Neither Todoroki nor Iida knew what she meant, but the soft explative coming from their injured friend said volumes.

"Go." She ordered, and none of the three questioned it.

~

Iida had so many questions. Why had Midoroya referred to himself as undead and 'Valerie' called his normal state his 'living form'? Why had he said he'd been murdered by a villain? What 'protection' did he have and why would he lose it?

And yet he didn't think he could ask any of them. His idiocy was the reason Midoriya had been hurt so badly and them all put at risk. How could he face his friends, much less ask deeply personal questions?

"I guess I owe you guys an explanation?" Izuku asked weakly. The ring formed around his waist, but he banished it.

"No you don't." Todoroki said bluntly. "Personal stuff, especially the hard stuff, isn't owed to anyone. When I shared my past with you, it was because I wanted to."

Izuku was quiet a moment. "Maybe I should anyway. I thought I was okay with stuff, but obviously not if I lost it like that."

They ducked into an alcove, allowing him to rest and giving them a modicum of privacy. "Okay, so you know my quirk was latent and I only unlocked it last spring, right?"

Iida and Todoroki nodded. It was common knowledge that was why he had so much trouble controlling his quirk at the start of the year.

"Turns out that wasn't the case. Like, to be fair I thought it was. Most latent quirks emerge in times of high stress and being the victim of a villain attack fit. But All Might saved me at the last moment and it was fine." The hysterical note in his voice showed it very much was not fine.

"And then the ghosts. showed up. Which sounds stupid, but that's what happened. They were calling me 'The Great One' and -"

Todoroki sat up straight. "The Yeti-person who stopped the villain attacking the school. She apologized to 'The Great One'. I thought she meant All Might but-"

"It was me. " Izuku said dryly. "I wasn't keen to advertise the fact. And I also didn't want to explain she and the person she captured were ghosts."

Iida bit his tongue. Ghosts seemed beyond far fetched, but it didn't feel right questioning his friend on the matter.

"The dog is too?" Todoroki guessed. "That's why it can disappear and go through walls. And all those reports of people with similar powers breaking quirk regulation laws..."

"Ghosts." Izuku confirmed. "The Honor Guard try to keep as many as they can from getting through."

"Who?" Iida finally asked.

Izuku huffed. "Right, I guess I have to explain about him. Danny, hero name Phantom. He's from long ago. Before...before quirks, really. His parents were experimenting with a portal to the Underworld and he got caught in it. Changed him. Basically made him undead. And he decided to become a hero with it. He did a pretty good job, up until..."

Izuku swallowed. "Up until some fanatics backed by the American Government decided to basically blow up the Underworld to destroy all the unnatural things in it. But the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead are connected, destroying one would destroy both."

"Danny sacrificed himself to save both worlds, destroying his parents gate in the process. He was mostly forgotten in the land of the living, as part of a cover up for the government to hide their involvement, but in the Land of the Dead he's like their All Might. This Legend that saved them all. He's got a gigantic following of people trying to live up to his ideals. The Honor Guard is a part of that. So is Valerie."

"He sounds like a true hero." Iida observed. "But you sounded upset when you first mentioned him."

Izuku left out a puff of breath. "Because I am him."

The other two just stared at him.

"Reincarnated." Izuku amended. "I was him in a past life. That's how I got his powers. It wasn't a close call, my body died and that triggered the undead powers from my past life. That also triggered the portal reopening, which is why the ghosts are coming through now. And it should be cool knowing I was a real hero in a past life, but I don't know if I can ever live up to everyone's expectations of me. And it's great I have so many people who want to help, but I also know each and every one of them would rather I be him instead."

"Midoriya, did you...see a councilor after the villain attack." Iida asked lenitively.

"Yeah," He shrugged. "New quirk, gotta figure it out and register it. Drove me crazy because it made no sense since, you know, turned out it wasn't a quirk at all."

"Not a quirk councilor." Todoroki clarified. "A trauma councilor." Izuku blinked at them.

"That's a no." Iida sighed, feeling another spark on anger in him. Thankfully not the maddening rage of before, but...he'd hated hearing Izuku talk of his treatment before he got his quirk and hated that even afterwards he still fell through the cracks. "You should have received some aid for dealing with such a horrible experience. Especially one bad enough you...are you entirely sure that you....?"

"I felt my lungs give out and my brain shut down." Izuku said simply. "I was fine after I transformed, though. I went home after the villain was captured."

"You didn't even go to a hospital?" Todoroki and Iida shared a look. They'd have to have a talk with All Might after this.

"I was fine."

"You were not." Iida insisted. "No wonder you reacted so poorly to Stain. You must think me a monster too." He had gone into that alley with the intent to kill for Justice. How could he be any different from Stain in Midoriya's mind.

"You're not a monster you just...weren't thinking straight," Izuku winced.

"What did she mean by protections?" Todoroki asked, steering the topic back.

"Okay, so Danny was a regular opponent to a lot of ghosts trying to break into the Land of the Living and a large amount started fighting him because they liked the challenge. It's been explained that I won't fight them until I get my Hero License, so that's been keeping them back. Some of the Honor Guard focus on keeping the more stubborn ones away from me, and Valerie acts as a bodyguard against those who make it through so they don't get their way after all. But if word gets out I fought a villain, that means I would be willing to fight, so they'll come after me in droves."

Another pang of guilt stabbed Iida. He'd screwed things up worse than he knew.

Todoroki reached into Izuku's oversized sleeve and grabbed his hand. A silent show of support. Just like Iida, the fact that Izuku had died and no one seemed to have noticed infuriated him. Izuku took the support and ran with it, grabbing Todoroki and sobbing his characteristic stream of tears. Todoroki shot Iida a glare demanding he join in the group hug.

Iida was unsure he was welcome, but complied. Izuku grabbed onto him too.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm crying,"

"You went through a terrible thing and weren't allowed to deal with it. Maybe now you can?" Iida suggested.

"You died. You're allowed to cry over it."

Izuku took that advice to heart, sobbing harder. He changed back partially through the cry and apologized for getting his blood (now red) on their costumes.

As they separated, Todoroki brushed some of the red off and stared at his fingers. The villain who'd attacked him, the hero who just left him, the ghosts who'd offered him guidance but no comfort, the system that ignored him. How many others had Izuku's blood on their hands as much as he did now and never even realized.

[classyghost096]

This is gonna be a hot take and I’m probably getting cancelled after this... but

(This is gonna be a long ass text so grab some popcorns and get comfortable)

Something feels pretty wrong about Evra, she came out of nowhere, she got close to Ash instantly and they became friends almost instantly (not to mention Ash fell for her after just minutes of talking with her)

Knowing the nature of the series and that Evra was found in Final Space, chances are high that Evra is actually a trap of Invictus, for everything I’ve said before...

But what if she’s not.. (and this is where the hot stuff begins)

If she’s actually gonna be an ally and probably Ash’s couple, then I have a lot of things against that, and you see, that means Evra was created to, literally, say "Look, this character is a lesbian, look how inclusive we are" and that is a problem I have with Final Space and other series.

I love Final Space, it’s a (mostly) mature series that touches a lot of topics (sometimes they get them right, and sometimes wrong) such as found family, forgiveness and the lost of a loved ones, and lamely "inclusion and representation" has not been handled in a proper way.

You have Olan, the crew and basically everyone involved in FS hyping the fact that a Character is gay, with the argument that is inclusive and representative, yet Hyping the sexuality of a character is like, y’know the LAST inclusive thing to do, because basically you’re telling me that something is gonna be special just because it is gay, and that sounds pretty exclusive, at least to me.

And the series doesn’t handle it better, the relationship between Ash and Evra is rushed, Ash starts falling for Evra almost instantly after knowing her and they only had a few minutes of developement, and Evra is the typical character that exists to be the romantic interest of the other, making Ash feel good and telling her basically everything she wants to hear instead of what she NEEDS to hear (Basically she has a "make me feel good-inator ").

And this is not right because first, that’s not how relationships work. When you want a genuine, healthy romantic relation with someone it takes more than just being comfortable around that person, you must complement each other, not complete them, you have to be there in the good times and the bad times aswell, you must trust each other and when the truth must be said, then say it, do not just be nice and make each other feel good all the time, when you must say, feel or do something to right a wrong of your partner, you must do it. Find a partner, not someone who just makes you happy.

Lamely this is not the case, Evra is just there to make Ash feel good and have fun, in fact the first thing they did together was destroying everything on their sight (The reason of why that is a bad thing should be selfexplanatory ), in other words, to the moment their relationship is pretty toxic and not organic at ALL.

The problem is not the fact that Ash is a lesbian, the problem is that the series is advertising this as something special and that stuff with a poorly developed relationship between her and a character they invented just to tell you that she’s a Lesbian (if they were really inclusive, they wouldn’t talk about how special is having a gay character, because people’s sexuality is nothing special about them, is just another little detail about them).

And I can’t explain myself why they couldn’t make an actual organic and well done relationship with Ash when they already made one with Gary and Quinn.

They were organically introduced in the story and their relationship takes the best out of each other instead of just them being happy. (I will talk about their relationship in another post)

So, if they wanted to have Ash having a romantic relation with someone ¿Then why not with Little cato? They’ve already shared a lot of experiences together, Little cato cares about Ash and Ash about little cato, and they actually can work out together as something genuinely good instead of a "I like you because you make me feel good"

Knowing that they also want to make Little cato Gay, maybe the writers used every resource they had to not make them a couple (Yeah maybe even aging Ash, btw if she goes back to normal then the relationship between her and Evra is going to bring soooo many awkward moments...)

It’s a bad thing when a show throws away good writing decisions and interesting things I order to follow an agenda.

And now a few problem I have with the fandom...

I like this fandom, I really do, I have made friends here, shared experiences and I’ve had a lot of fun over all...

But why the fuck are you guys and the writers so desperate to have a gay character, and making Little Cato that Gay character?

Because people were upset that Little cato was not the gay one but my question is ¿Why do you need one so much and why particularly him?

If it is because he is fragile, and a little shy then you’re literally begging for him to be gay just because he acts like a gay stereotype. And that is totally wrong. Heterosexual people can be shy and Fragile. Gay people can be shy and fragile. Everyone can be shy and fragile because your sexuality just defines if you like men, women, or both, and nothing more.

The fact that that people want a teenager character to have a certain quality just to represent them seems off to me, you don’t need a character to be gay to represent you, YOU can represent yourself better than anyone can.

So yeah, if you ask me, the writers took some Poor choices in order to have a certain part of the audience "Happy with how representative they are"

Now this is just what I think and if you want to disagree you totally can, you maybe even can change my mind.

But come on guys, people are not made of sexualities, races or political agendas, it’s just a little part of a bigger something, and that’s why giving importance to sexualities is just wrong.

Now this does not mean that Final Space is bad or that I don’t like the people behind it, I think that Olan Rogers and his crew are really lovely and talented people and they’ve put a lot of their soul in a show that, while is not perfect, is truly a great story and full of awesome moments. But I definetively don’t like some of their choices and I will express that, and that doesn’t mean I dislike any of them, because I love this series and the crew behind it, and I’ll always do.

Sincerely, a Fantrexian

[fernreads]

To fully impress upon its audience the immense power of this software, Anomaly Six did what few in the world can claim to do: spied on American spies. “I like making fun of our own people,” Clark began. Pulling up a Google Maps-like satellite view, the sales rep showed the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. With virtual boundary boxes drawn around both, a technique known as geofencing, A6’s software revealed an incredible intelligence bounty: 183 dots representing phones that had visited both agencies potentially belonging to American intelligence personnel, with hundreds of lines streaking outward revealing their movements, ready to track throughout the world. “So, if I’m a foreign intel officer, that’s 183 start points for me now,” Clark noted.

[...] Clicking on one of dots from the NSA allowed Clark to follow that individual’s exact movements, virtually every moment of their life, from that previous year until the present. “I mean, just think of fun things like sourcing,” Clark said. “If I’m a foreign intel officer, I don’t have access to things like the agency or the fort, I can find where those people live, I can find where they travel, I can see when they leave the country.” The demonstration then tracked the individual around the United States and abroad to a training center and airfield roughly an hour’s drive northwest of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Zarqa, Jordan, where the U.S. reportedly maintains a fleet of drones.

[...] Back stateside, the person was tracked to their own home. A6’s software includes a function called “Regularity,” a button clients can press that automatically analyzes frequently visited locations to deduce where a target lives and works, even though the GPS pinpoints sourced by A6 omit the phone owner’s name. Privacy researchers have long shown that even “anonymized” location data is trivially easy to attach to an individual based on where they frequent most, a fact borne out by A6’s own demonstration. After hitting the “Regularity” button, Clark zoomed in on a Google Street View image of their home.

In the months leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, two obscure American startups met to discuss a potential surveillance partnership that would merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter. According to Brendon Clark of Anomaly Six — or “A6” — the combination of its cellphone location-tracking technology with the social media surveillance provided by Zignal Labs would permit the U.S. government to effortlessly spy on Russian forces as they amassed along the Ukrainian border, or similarly track Chinese nuclear submarines. To prove that the technology worked, Clark pointed A6’s powers inward, spying on the National Security Agency and CIA, using their own cellphones against them.

Virginia-based Anomaly Six was founded in 2018 by two ex-military intelligence officers and maintains a public presence that is scant to the point of mysterious, its website disclosing nothing about what the firm actually does. But there’s a good chance that A6 knows an immense amount about you. The company is one of many that purchases vast reams of location data, tracking hundreds of millions of people around the world by exploiting a poorly understood fact: Countless common smartphone apps are constantly harvesting your location and relaying it to advertisers, typically without your knowledge or informed consent, relying on disclosures buried in the legalese of the sprawling terms of service that the companies involved count on you never reading. Once your location is beamed to an advertiser, there is currently no law in the United States prohibiting the further sale and resale of that information to firms like Anomaly Six, which are free to sell it to their private sector and governmental clientele. For anyone interested in tracking the daily lives of others, the digital advertising industry is taking care of the grunt work day in and day out — all a third party need do is buy access.

Company materials obtained by The Intercept and Tech Inquiry provide new details of just how powerful Anomaly Six’s globe-spanning surveillance powers are, capable of providing any paying customer with abilities previously reserved for spy bureaus and militaries.

According to audiovisual recordings of an A6 presentation reviewed by The Intercept and Tech Inquiry, the firm claims that it can track roughly 3 billion devices in real time, equivalent to a fifth of the world’s population. The staggering surveillance capacity was cited during a pitch to provide A6’s phone-tracking capabilities to Zignal Labs, a social media monitoring firm that leverages its access to Twitter’s rarely granted “firehose” data stream to sift through hundreds of millions of tweets per day without restriction. With their powers combined, A6 proposed, Zignal’s corporate and governmental clients could not only surveil global social media activity, but also determine who exactly sent certain tweets, where they sent them from, who they were with, where they’d been previously, and where they went next. This enormously augmented capability would be an obvious boon to both regimes keeping tabs on their global adversaries and companies keeping tabs on their employees.

The source of the materials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their livelihood, expressed grave concern about the legality of government contractors such as Anomaly Six and Zignal Labs “revealing social posts, usernames, and locations of Americans” to “Defense Department” users. The source also asserted that Zignal Labs had willfully deceived Twitter by withholding the broader military and corporate surveillance use cases of its firehose access. Twitter’s terms of service technically prohibit a third party from “conducting or providing surveillance or gathering intelligence” using its access to the platform, though the practice is common and enforcement of this ban is rare. Asked about these concerns, spokesperson Tom Korolsyshun told The Intercept “Zignal abides by privacy laws and guidelines set forth by our data partners.”

A6 claims that its GPS dragnet yields between 30 to 60 location pings per device per day and 2.5 trillion locational data points annually worldwide, adding up to 280 terabytes of location data per year and many petabytes in total, suggesting that the company surveils roughly 230 million devices on an average day. A6’s salesperson added that while many rival firms gather personal location data via a phone’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections that provide general whereabouts, Anomaly 6 harvests only GPS pinpoints, potentially accurate to within several feet. In addition to location, A6 claimed that it has built a library of over 2 billion email addresses and other personal details that people share when signing up for smartphone apps that can be used to identify who the GPS ping belongs to. All of this is powered, A6’s Clark noted during the pitch, by general ignorance of the ubiquity and invasiveness of smartphone software development kits, known as SDKs: “Everything is agreed to and sent by the user even though they probably don’t read the 60 pages in the [end user license agreement].”

The Intercept was not able to corroborate Anomaly Six’s claims about its data or capabilities, which were made in the context of a sales pitch. Privacy researcher Zach Edwards told The Intercept that he believed the claims were plausible but cautioned that firms can be prone to exaggerating the quality of their data. Mobile security researcher Will Strafach agreed, noting that A6’s data sourcing boasts “sound alarming but aren’t terribly far off from ambitious claims by others.” According to Wolfie Christl, a researcher specializing in the surveillance and privacy implications of the app data industry, even if Anomaly Six’s capabilities are exaggerated or based partly on inaccurate data, a company possessing even a fraction of these spy powers would be deeply concerning from a personal privacy standpoint.

Reached for comment, Zignal’s spokesperson provided the following statement: “While Anomaly 6 has in the past demonstrated its capabilities to Zignal Labs, Zignal Labs does not have a relationship with Anomaly 6. We have never integrated Anomaly 6’s capabilities into our platform, nor have we ever delivered Anomaly 6 to any of our customers.”

When asked about the company’s presentation and its surveillance capabilities, Anomaly Six co-founder Brendan Huff responded in an email that “Anomaly Six is a veteran-owned small business that cares about American interests, natural security, and understands the law.”

Companies like A6 are fueled by the ubiquity of SDKs, which are turnkey packages of code that software-makers can slip in their apps to easily add functionality and quickly monetize their offerings with ads. According to Clark, A6 can siphon exact GPS measurements gathered through covert partnerships with “thousands” of smartphone apps, an approach he described in his presentation as a “farm-to-table approach to data acquisition.” This data isn’t just useful for people hoping to sell you things: The largely unregulated global trade in personal data is increasingly finding customers not only at marketing agencies, but also federal agencies tracking immigrants and drone targets as well as sanctions and tax evasion. According to public records first reported by Motherboard, U.S. Special Operations Command paid Anomaly Six $590,000 in September 2020 for a year of access to the firm’s “commercial telemetry feed.”

Anomaly Six software lets its customers browse all of this data in a convenient and intuitive Google Maps-style satellite view of Earth. Users need only find a location of interest and draw a box around it, and A6 fills that boundary with dots denoting smartphones that passed through that area. Clicking a dot will provide you with lines representing the device’s — and its owner’s — movements around a neighborhood, city, or indeed the entire world.

As the Russian military continued its buildup along the country’s border with Ukraine, the A6 sales rep detailed how GPS surveillance could help turn Zignal into a sort of private spy agency capable of assisting state clientele in monitoring troop movements. Imagine, Clark explained, if the crisis zone tweets Zignal rapidly surfaces through the firehose were only a starting point. Using satellite imagery tweeted by accounts conducting increasingly popular “open-source intelligence,” or OSINT, investigations, Clark showed how A6’s GPS tracking would let Zignal clients determine not simply that the military buildup was taking place, but track the phones of Russian soldiers as they mobilized to determine exactly where they’d trained, where they were stationed, and which units they belonged to. In one case, Clark showed A6 software tracing Russian troop phones backward through time, away from the border and back to a military installation outside Yurga, and suggested that they could be traced further, all the way back to their individual homes. Previous reporting by the Wall Street Journal indicates that this phone-tracking method is already used to monitor Russian military maneuvers and that American troops are just as vulnerable.

In another A6 map demonstration, Clark zoomed in closely on the town of Molkino, in southern Russia, where the Wagner Group, an infamous Russian mercenary outfit, is reportedly headquartered. The map showed dozens of dots indicating devices at the Wagner base, along with scattered lines showing their recent movements. “So you can just start watching these devices,” Clark explained. “Any time they start leaving the area, I’m looking at potential Russian predeployment activity for their nonstandard actors, their nonuniform people. So if you see them go into Libya or Democratic Republic of the Congo or things like that, that can help you better understand potential soft power actions the Russians are doing.”

The pitch noted that this kind of mass phone surveillance could be used by Zignal to aid unspecified clients with “counter-messaging,” debunking Russian claims that such military buildups were mere training exercises and not the runup to an invasion. “When you’re looking at counter-messaging, where you guys have a huge part of the value you provide your client in the counter-messaging piece is — [Russia is] saying, ‘Oh, it’s just local, regional, um, exercises.’ Like, no. We can see from the data that they’re coming from all over Russia.”

To fully impress upon its audience the immense power of this software, Anomaly Six did what few in the world can claim to do: spied on American spies. “I like making fun of our own people,” Clark began. Pulling up a Google Maps-like satellite view, the sales rep showed the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. With virtual boundary boxes drawn around both, a technique known as geofencing, A6’s software revealed an incredible intelligence bounty: 183 dots representing phones that had visited both agencies potentially belonging to American intelligence personnel, with hundreds of lines streaking outward revealing their movements, ready to track throughout the world. “So, if I’m a foreign intel officer, that’s 183 start points for me now,” Clark noted.

The NSA and CIA both declined to comment.

Clicking on one of dots from the NSA allowed Clark to follow that individual’s exact movements, virtually every moment of their life, from that previous year until the present. “I mean, just think of fun things like sourcing,” Clark said. “If I’m a foreign intel officer, I don’t have access to things like the agency or the fort, I can find where those people live, I can find where they travel, I can see when they leave the country.” The demonstration then tracked the individual around the United States and abroad to a training center and airfield roughly an hour’s drive northwest of Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Zarqa, Jordan, where the U.S. reportedly maintains a fleet of drones.

“There is sure as hell a serious national security threat if a data broker can track a couple hundred intelligence officials to their homes and around the world,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a vocal critic of the personal data industry, told The Intercept in an interview. “It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to see how foreign spies can use this information for espionage, blackmail, all kinds of, as they used to say, dastardly deeds.”

Back stateside, the person was tracked to their own home. A6’s software includes a function called “Regularity,” a button clients can press that automatically analyzes frequently visited locations to deduce where a target lives and works, even though the GPS pinpoints sourced by A6 omit the phone owner’s name. Privacy researchers have long shown that even “anonymized” location data is trivially easy to attach to an individual based on where they frequent most, a fact borne out by A6’s own demonstration. After hitting the “Regularity” button, Clark zoomed in on a Google Street View image of their home.

“Industry has repeatedly claimed that collecting and selling this cellphone location data won’t violate privacy because it is tied to device ID numbers instead of people’s names. This feature proves just how facile those claims are,” said Nate Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Of course, following a person’s movements 24 hours a day, day after day, will tell you where they live, where they work, who they spend time with, and who they are. The privacy violation is immense.”

The demo continued with a surveillance exercise tagging U.S. naval movements, using a tweeted satellite photo of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Sea snapped by the commercial firm Maxar Technologies. Clark broke down how a single satellite snapshot could be turned into surveillance that he claimed was even more powerful than that executed from space. Using the latitude and longitude coordinates appended to the Maxar photo along with its time stamp, A6 was able to pick up a single phone signal from the ship’s position at that moment, south of Crete. “But it only takes one,” Clark noted. “So when I look back where that one device goes: Oh, it goes back to Norfolk. And actually, on the carrier in the satellite picture — what else is on the carrier? When you look, here are all the other devices.” His screen revealed a view of the carrier docked in Virginia, teeming with thousands of colorful dots representing phone location pings gathered by A6. “Well, now I can see every time that that ship is deploying. I don’t need satellites right now. I can use this.”

Though Clark conceded that the company has far less data available on Chinese phone owners, the demo concluded with a GPS ping picked up aboard an alleged Chinese nuclear submarine. Using only unclassified satellite imagery and commercial advertising data, Anomaly Six was able to track the precise movements of the world’s most sophisticated military and intelligence forces. With tools like those sold by A6 and Zignal, even an OSINT hobbyist would have global surveillance powers previously held only by nations. “People put way too much on social media,” Clark added with a laugh.

As location data has proliferated largely unchecked by government oversight in the United States, one hand washes another, creating a private sector capable of state-level surveillance powers that can also fuel the state’s own growing appetite for surveillance without the usual judicial scrutiny. Critics say the loose trade in advertising data constitutes a loophole in the Fourth Amendment, which requires the government to make its case to a judge before obtaining location coordinates from a cellular provider. But the total commodification of phone data has made it possible for the government to skip the court order and simply buy data that’s often even more accurate than what could be provided by the likes of Verizon. Civil libertarians say this leaves a dangerous gap between the protections intended by the Constitution and the law’s grasp on the modern data trade.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that cellphone location information is protected under the Fourth Amendment because of the detailed picture of a person’s life it can reveal,” explained Wessler. “Government agencies’ purchases of access to Americans’ sensitive location data raise serious questions about whether they are engaged in an illegal end run around the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. It is time for Congress to end the legal uncertainty enabling this surveillance once and for all by moving toward passage of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.”

Though such legislation could restrict the government’s ability to piggyback off commercial surveillance, app-makers and data brokers would remain free to surveil phone owners. Still, Wyden, a co-sponsor of that bill, told The Intercept that he believes “this legislation sends a very strong message” to the “Wild West” of ad-based surveillance but that clamping down on the location data supply chain would be “certainly a question for the future.” Wyden suggested that protecting a device’s location trail from snooping apps and advertisers might be best handled by the Federal Trade Commission. Separate legislation previously introduced by Wyden would empower the FTC to crack down on promiscuous data sharing and broaden consumers’ ability to opt out of ad tracking.

A6 is far from the only firm engaged in privatized device-tracking surveillance. Three of Anomaly Six’s key employees previously worked at competing firm Babel Street, which named all three of them in a 2018 lawsuit first reported by the Wall Street Journal. According to the legal filing, Brendan Huff and Jeffrey Heinz co-founded Anomaly Six (and lesser-known Datalus 5) months after ending their employment at Babel Street in April 2018, with the intent of replicating Babel’s cellphone location surveillance product, “Locate X,” in a partnership with major Babel competitor Semantic AI. In July 2018, Clark followed Huff and Heinz by resigning from his position as Babel’s “primary interface to … intelligence community clients” and becoming an employee of both Anomaly Six and Semantic.

Like its rival Dataminr, Zignal touts its mundane partnerships with the likes of Levi’s and the Sacramento Kings, marketing itself publicly in vague terms that carry little indication that it uses Twitter for intelligence-gathering purposes, ostensibly in clear violation of Twitter’s anti-surveillance policy. Zignal’s ties to government run deep: Zignal’s advisory board includes a former head of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Charles Cleveland, as well as the CEO of the Rendon Group, John Rendon, whose bio notes that he “pioneered the use of strategic communications and real-time information management as an element of national power, serving as a consultant to the White House, U.S. National Security community, including the U.S. Department of Defense.” Further, public records state that Zignal was paid roughly $4 million to subcontract under defense staffing firm ECS Federal on Project Maven for “Publicly Available Information … Data Aggregation” and a related “Publicly Available Information enclave” in the U.S. Army’s Secure Unclassified Network.

The remarkable world-spanning capabilities of Anomaly Six are representative of the quantum leap occurring in the field of OSINT. While the term is often used to describe the internet-enabled detective work that draws on public records to, say, pinpoint the location of a war crime from a grainy video clip, “automated OSINT” systems now use software to combine enormous datasets that far outpace what a human could do on their own. Automated OSINT has also become something of a misnomer, using information that is by no means “open source” or in the public domain, like commercial GPS data that must be bought from a private broker.

While OSINT techniques are powerful, they are generally shielded from accusations of privacy violation because the “open source” nature of the underlying information means that it was already to some extent public. This is a defense that Anomaly Six, with its trove of billions of purchased data points, can’t muster. In February, the Dutch Review Committee on the Intelligence and Security Services issued a report on automated OSINT techniques and the threat to personal privacy they may represent: “The volume, nature and range of personal data in these automated OSINT tools may lead to a more serious violation of fundamental rights, in particular the right to privacy, than consulting data from publicly accessible online information sources, such as publicly accessible social media data or data retrieved using a generic search engine.” This fusion of publicly available data, privately procured personal records, and computerized analysis isn’t the future of governmental surveillance, but the present. Last year, the New York Times reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency “buys commercially available databases containing location data from smartphone apps and searches it for Americans’ past movements without a warrant,” a surveillance method now regularly practiced throughout the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS, and beyond.

[jaywhitecotton]

I’m sorry to add to the numerous think pieces already exhausting every shred of attention being profited off Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, but please allow me – as a person who has had multiple people threaten me on stage (I’m very funny), let me cash in the last two cents in my pocket:

Chris Rock knew it was coming and was right to take the hit. He saw Will approach, tucked his hands behind his back and took it like a pro. You tell the joke, you take the hit. It’s that simple.

Now I’m not advocating for violence here at all. I know most of the comics on my timeline are posting a lot of the new fears they have about being attacked. Let me assure you – none of the nine people at the vegan/laundromat/dog park show are ever going to approach you off – much less on stage. You’re very bad at this and a disappointment to everyone who loves you. May god have mercy on your soul.

What Will Smith did was wrong. Stupid, selfish, fake, tired, entitled, all of that and more, but what if it’s something else all together? Something not many of the people currently turning a profession into a hobby is willing to openly address?

What if we take entertainment way too seriously and need to admit that, perhaps, using the industrialization of the arts as a meat grinder for the soul - is unhealthy?

What if turning a core foundation of the humanities into a numbers game fed off manipulating people on both sides of an advertising model – is bad for art and poison for the ego?

Did I lose you at the word "art"?

Look, I can spend hours discussing what is and what isn’t art, but that’s not going to do anyone any good here so I’ll just say that I personally believe art is the pursuit of combining craft, discipline and personal expression and I think we can all agree - very, very, very gay.

I also believe it can be entertainment, but calling something art shouldn’t be used to cover up for poorly executed craft. Saying something is art isn’t a shield or deflection of merit, especially if there are well-established objective truths defining its craft.

Standup Comedy is an art, but it’s a low art. Really easy to fake, incredibly difficult to master.

You go into a comedy show expecting that anything can be said. That’s why it’s exciting. You go to a horror movie unsure of what new fears will express themselves. That’s why it’s exciting. You listen to aggressive music, expressing rage and acts of violence. That’s why it’s exciting. You watch a man in a Speedo jump off the top rope to elbow drop another half nude man pretending to be passed out because it’s exciting and again - art is very gay.

We love to be excited and getting any opportunity to live out the horrors of life without the worry of certain death is one of the foundations of modern entertainment.

The beauty of the craft is all the work that goes in to making you feel like you crossed a line without actually crossing any lines. You go on a roller coaster afraid, but you know deep down you'll be completely safe. It’s the agreement everyone has to make when they enter the showroom.

If either side fucks up their part, they get bounced out. Fair and fine. Its not a relaxing past time. It’s mostly all growing pains.

Standup Comedy isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It was created by Jews dealing with a goddamn holocaust. Put the pillows away.

Comfort kills creativity and breeds complacency. It’s why rich creatives seldom make great art and second albums are mostly garbage filler produced in the name of content. The Smith family understands this very well.

Content for the sake of content is not art. It’s manufacturing. And it’s being pushed hard by an industry that has no value for artists, only in molding personal expression into a numbers game. The industry uses artists the way Uber uses drivers to make them money while actively investing in finding a way to replace them with unpaid AI.

The fact that most of their drivers are failing entertainers is not lost on me.

Again - if you hate that I’m using the word “artist” here that’s fine. If you think another discussion about this is stupid, I get it. No one said you had to consider yourself an artist, but pretending to be doing a business that asks you to mold your personal expression to their profit driven standards - while making you pay for the privilege - seems like a grift?

I really think Entertainers have become the marks, but in a new fashion. Before the industry always insisted you had to go through them to get your success and they fucked you. We accepted that.

Now they sell you on your “independence” by forcing you to buy your way towards “success” on their data collecting platforms.

How many of you think you're working for yourself when you're really working for Spotify, iTunes, Instagram, YouTube and so on? Sure you can simulate independence on any of these platforms, but try not paying your property taxes and tell me who really owns your home?

The industry used you to create an attention economy.

If you want to make “it” in entertainment, you have to keep your name generating attention. “Generate content, stay known, buy ads, someone is right behind you waiting to take what you thought was yours.”

Book deals are my favorite. For some reason the only way the average American reader will pick up a book is if some mentally ill celebrity needs to sell their exploits.

Will Smith just released his a few months ago.

Was the whole thing staged? Sorta. Was it truly spontaneous? Kinda? Possibly some dumb shit from the past about the movie Head of State and them racing to be the first fake black president in a movie or whatever.

I don’t think the reality or the pageantry of it even matters. I think the underlying lesson here is we need to care less about entertainment and enjoy it as a frivolous fun thing not to be taken real, even when they play it seriously.

(You know, the way pro wrestling used to be before the world flipped and everything became pro wrestling - except wrestling?)

Something Dave Chappelle said in an interview years ago really stuck with me. “What is this business doing to otherwise strong minded people?”

Dave specifically focused on black artists like Martin Lawrence and Mariah Carey, how their individual meltdowns happened so publicly. The general public immediately wrote these people off as weak. The man who amplified and blew up on Def Jam, arguably the toughest and most demanding of audiences – the man who commanded that stage and is “currently running half naked in traffic with a pistol” – is just “weak”?

Maybe pushing the public towards simulating celebrity while watering down the standards of art to allow everyone to feel like a professional something, is unhealthy? Like smoking before Reagan.

For all it’s current therapy speak, industry doesn’t actually care. There’s nothing in place to address the actual mental health of the people it’s openly draining of. Only quick fixes and enablers to keep these deteriorating spirits afloat until they’re sucked dry and no longer interesting or even human to us.

Did the industry step in to help Martin at any point he started showing signs of a nervous breakdown? No, they stayed in their seats.

“Never mind the broken man behind the curtain. He’s famous. He’s rich. Probably a kook, wandering the streets with a pistol like that. Probably a black thing. Now please watch this white savior movie we keep making because white guilt print’s paper. How is Martin doing these days? Is it time to profit off his redemption story yet?”

The industry is doing what all industries do. I’m not complaining about a dog behaving as a dog. I pursued standup just because. Never needed a reason or had much use for myth building. I just really love the challenge and think the idea of working one hour a night saying stupid shit is a brilliant scam and I love sleeping in.

Some of you hate hearing that. I’m sorry I’ve never been into hopes and dreams. I didn’t have your childhood. I’m not bitter. I’m annoyed. You have to believe in yourself to be bitter and I find projecting false confidence to be utterly annoying.

I just want to relate to the people around me.

Yet more and more I feel myself closer to a feeling of disgust with every attention seeking entertainer I come across and I just can’t shake it. A lot of you are just absolute nightmares if not outright hucksters and its getting harder the more you test how far you can play make believe with other people’s actual values.

You all lie so much trying to present yourselves as the leading voice for others, while doing and absolving most of the shit you purport to be “against”.

I’m not saying to stop, I’m just saying everything was way better when we were all IN on the scam, like proper villains – instead of what this thing has evolved into.

Car salesmen trying to sell their merch to other car salesmen.

The audience needs to be reminded who is entertaining them. Needy self-involved rich kids who can afford to appear like professionals - and the poor idiots in the trenches desperately trying to be seen as one of them.

At the time I heard that Chappelle interview, I was noticing so many of my friends move to New York and LA at the behest of the Industry – only to come back and visit as completely different people.

I mean empty shells, man. Just plaster with no walls or foundation. I’m positive most of you have noticed it too.

We don’t say anything to them, do we? Maybe a “You’ve changed!” followed by a sarcastic head shake.

I think we don’t sincerely approach this topic because we might be too nice and overly cautious. No one wants to sound too certain about anything because most of communication has become weaponized by an incredibly greedy attention seeking culture.

And even the people fighting against that are still succumbing to the trappings of self-importance. They consider themselves “on the front lines of the culture wars”, building an audience on the same media model they purport to rally against.

Morning Zoo Radio Hacks selling your values truly believe they’re free to say whatever they want with unyielding importunity. They genuinely believe they own their own business.

Again - Don’t pay your property taxes and see who really owns your home.

Its hard to even address this because we love supporting underdogs so much while believing we will also rise to the top. It’s how they found a way to sell us our own dreams.

The industry constantly pushes the rags to riches narrative, but if quarantine taught me anything - it showed me just how many rich kids and legacy acts have a stranglehold on all things media.

“You have to put in the work and really want it!” - a drug dealer

Maybe this is why the word “art” is so discouraged and heavily burdened with the accusation of pretension?

Maybe raising an entire generation on another generation’s nostalgia is turning the arts into something lesser?

Maybe this is why every movie is a reboot written by people drawing their work from other scenes from other movies, because their entire lives were so saturated in media – they forgot to experience real life themselves?

Or maybe we don’t want to seem like old people, the outdated “square” at the hip circle-jerk for thinking the Smith family is fucking weird and unsettling.

I’m sorry Will, but your whole family is weird and unsettling. I get bummed out every time your fevered egos try to hold us hostage.

I’m sure it’s not for me and you’d tell me to mind my own business, but goddamn do you seem to DEMAND it to be everyone’s fucking business all the time!

You made a talk show out of your personal sex life and marriage and now you demand people to keep your wife’s name out their mouths?

Bitch YOU.. maybe YOU need to keep your wife’s name outa YOUR mouth. No one owes you their fucking time so stop demanding it.

You.

I know way too much about your wife’s pussy from YOU, “Prince.”

And maybe that’s why Will had to step up and slap the funny joke man.

You see, you’re not just insulting the woman that lets him watch her fuck, you’re fucking up Will Smith’s money. His wife is an extension of HIS brand.

Everyone in the Smith household is a product. They all put their lives for sale one emancipated child at a time. All for the entertainment business. That’s not love, that’s a mental illness.

That’s entertainment.

Its ugly disguised as beautiful and breaks even the strongest of minds. Dave was right about this shit and no one wants to really address it because it means taking some responsibility.

Will Smith was a fucking smart, engineering rich kid who was plucked by Quincy Jones under the same model that tricked out Michael Jackson and many more. He had charisma for days and – from an obviously shitty industry point of view – could sell “black” to boring white people who wanted to feel good about themselves in the 90’s. He’s a true fucking talent and in many ways an underrated artist with an incredible body of entertaining distractions.

But so what?

I mean really – fuck Will Smith. Fuck actors. Fuck musicians. Fuck comics. It’s just fucking art. It’s frivolous even when it’s desperate to be seen as important.

Again – I’m sorry you’re whole family is fucking weird, I can’t shake how uncomfortable y’all make me. Fuck anyone for judging anyone, myself included, but those kids are weird and Jada is like some strange mix of Kanye West meets Eartha Kitt.

Do you realize ALL THE STUPID REAL SHIT ABOUT the Smith family Rock had to cross off in his head in that moment?!

Settling on a 1990’s Demi Moore flop was an act of comedic compassion. Chris Rock wasn’t surprised to be slapped, he was shocked because it wasn’t for the hundreds of things he chose not to say out of respect to THEM lol

Personally, I’m more pissed he went with GI Jane when Enemy Mine was RIGHT. FUCKING. THERE.

(composes self)

In the movie Independence Day, Will and an alien invader both crash to the ground after a vicious battle in the air. He climbs onto the craft to investigate and the moment he’s confronted with this horrific alien monster, he punches it in the face and yells “Welcome to Earth!”

That’s also the name of his new travel show for Disney Plus. An obvious grab for content creation bartering on Will’s charisma as he explores his business options in a broadening new medium.

I haven’t watched one episode, but I imagine the entire show is about regular people trying to de-celebrity Will back into a human being, instead of this Hollywood whore, pimping his family to the highest bidding media outlets.

My hats off to Chris Rock for taking the hit. He’s a pro and knows a new hour when he sees it. I can’t wait to see it. Probably gonna call it Taken’ the Hits. Bo Burnham will direct and it will be staged in the gymnasium of his old white High School.

It’s gonna be great business for Netflix, earn awards and everyone who clapped and supported Smith’s attack, will praise Rock’s resilience and artistry.

“HOW THE FUCK IS RICKY GERVAIS STILL ALIVE?!

HOWWWW THE FUUUUUCK IS RICKY GERVAIS….(STOMP) STILL (STOMP) A (STOMP) ….LIVE?

(softer, but more thoughtful) How is that man, Ricky, still alive, folks?

If you got a British accent you can say whatever the fuck you want to White America!

(Over exaggerated smile)

If… (insert recently disgraced celebrity) said that shit with an English, accent he’d be…”

(Five minute act out of Will Smith slapping Rock like an English butler, maybe dueling with the guns from MIB, I dunno, I’m too high to be writing this bullshit)

What I’m saying is Chris Rock is going to bounce back from this and certainly doesn’t need me defending him.

He needed that from the hundreds of millionaires pretending to be superheroes, who – for whatever reason – always seem to stay seated whenever real shit goes down.

They all sat in their soft chairs, half cheering undecidedly while the other half called their agents to get advice on which after party charity will benefit their career.

Who knows, maybe they’re all right? Pretending to care about things publicly pays a lot in an attention economy. Maybe alopecia needs a celebrity spokesperson?

And maybe that’s his redemption story.

Welcome to Earth, Rock.

[rwdestuffs]

Like… If it had been Ruby, Nora, or even Emerald who did the mercy killing, I don’t think that people would have such an issue with the Volume 8 finale.

Jaune being shipped into the next volume and that whole island area is also a major point of contention. The writers either don’t get why Jaune is an unpopular character, or they do get it and they don’t care. Jaune has been historically unpopular. You advertise a show about four badass girls fighting monsters and saving the world and such, and then in your first volume, prior to giving a single arc dedicated to the B and the Y in your title, you give four episodes to… The side character who barfed all over Y’s shoes and was generally unimpressive as a character.

Now admittedly, that last part is hard to gauge since I doubt that they gauge the reaction of one episode then write and animate in a scramble to make the next episode better, but really? Really? Giving FOUR WHOLE EPISODES to a character whose initial isn’t in the title was their bright idea? That whole arc was 95% dedicated to Jaune. The other 5% being dedicated to Pyrrha. We got barely anything on Ruby, nothing on Weiss, nothing on Blake, and nothing on Yang.

In fact, Yang would have to wait until VOLUME 2. to get an arc dedicated to her, and it was a brief moment leading up to the dance where she has to call out Blake on her obsessive behavior. Apparently, Jaune constantly asking out Weiss and trying to figure out means of getting to go to the dance with Weiss was deemed more important than actually developing Yang and Blake.

Seriously, look at the differences between the two different plotlines. Jaune’s “Quest to woo Weiss” was given more screentime than “Yang’s quest to make Blake relax.”

Pyrrha’s entire character orbited around Jaune until her death. For anyone who wasn’t a Pyrrha or a Jaune fan, Pyrrha’s death barely hits because we don’t see nor know the impact that her death would have on the other characters. We don’t get to see her bonding with Ruby over the whole “Prodigy” thing, we get barely any interactions with Ren or Nora that would indicate how deep their friendship goes, We don’t get that sparing rivalry with Yang, we don’t have the whole “Fame gets in the way of people getting to know us” thing with Weiss, and we don’t get… ANY interactions with Blake whatsoever.

So the entire reason why Volume 8 is so derided, is primarily because of Jaune.

Volume 4 had the line chart that revealed that Jaune had more lines than Weiss and Yang combined [source]

This is what led people to claim that Jaune was a self-insert, or a writer’s pet. Combine that with the fact that head writer at the time Mile Luna is his voice, this was extremely easy to believe.

To reiterate: A show about four lady characters had half of them upstaged by a side character that just so happened to be voiced by the head writer. Yeah. Like, LITERALLY NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE THAT JAUNE WASN’T A SELF INSERT AND/OR CREATOR’S PET!

It’s honestly stupid that the writers just don’t care about why Jaune isn’t as popular. They’re trying way too hard to do it, and it comes at the expense of other characters.

Volume 7 was arguably the best from Jaune since that one training session recording scene from Volume 4. He was in the background, he was providing support, the only actual complaint were the moms that fawned all over him. Jaune wasn’t stealing the spotlight from anybody.

It’s like the writers took note of the lack of complaints about Jaune and assumed “Oh. Jaune is likable again. Let’s push him to the forefront of events.” When no. Jaune wasn’t likable again, he just managed to land in that sweetspot of not stealing away the spotlight from the main characters and he was appreciated for that.

We barely got a whole lot of Ren and Nora during that whole thing. But the scenes they had were pretty great in Volume 7. Volume 8 was really iffy, and while I could rant about why Volume 8 was weird for them, they had some great scenes. I liked Ren’s outburst at Jaune, and Nora’s encouragement towards Penny was the best from her character in a long time.

People want a volume of RWBY. They don’t want a volume of “Jaune and team RWBY” Like… Just RWBY. Just them. Their relationship towards one another, what they mean to each other, whether or not their motivations changed, what drives them now, and so on and so forth.

Volume 4′s opening even pushed Jaune to the forefront and pushed Ruby to the backgronud when we saw the team RNJR lineup. There is a precedent to Jaune hogging the spotlight, and it’s not a good omen.

Had Jaune not fallen into the void island with the titular team, had he not been the one to deliver the mercy kill to Penny, had he not been a spotlight hog for a majority of the show… Nobody would be complaining.

These issues stem from Jaune. So much time was dedicated to him, that everything else was dropped or rushed. Weiss actually apologizing might have been a thing had Jaune not stolen a quarter of the first Volume for his own storyline. We might have gotten some big developments between Yang and Blake had Jaune’s quest to woo Weiss not been so heavily focused on. We might have gotten an actual and proper PTSD arc for Yang had Jaune not been so busy hogging those lines in Volume 4.

All story failings are a fault of Jaune, and Miles’ refusal to keep him in the background.

In all honesty, I want this post to age poorly. I want Jaune to be relegated to background for Volume 9. I want Ruby, and all those characters to just blow up at him for being unable to save Penny.

But there’s a precedent.

And it’s not a good one.

[hamliet]

when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt. 

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful. 

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through. 

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense. 

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding. 

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this. 

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all. 

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help. 

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story. 

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.